


Appoggiatura

by psalloacappella



Series: Equilibrium [17]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Blood and Injury, Complicated Relationships, Dai-nana-han | Team 7 as Family (Naruto), Drama, F/M, Female Friendship, Multi, Other, Shinobi Politics (Naruto), Tenderness, a little of Sasuke admiring Sakura too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-17
Updated: 2020-02-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22764001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psalloacappella/pseuds/psalloacappella
Summary: “Haven’t – haven’t we lost enough already?”❦In a moment she feels them trying, futilely, to fix it all. Everything they broke.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Nara Shikamaru, Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke & Uzumaki Naruto, Haruno Sakura & Yamanaka Ino, Haruno Sakura/Uchiha Sasuke, Uzumaki Naruto & Yamanaka Ino
Series: Equilibrium [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/46843
Comments: 2
Kudos: 95





	Appoggiatura

**Author's Note:**

> i like mess.  
> if you don't like friendship, walk the plank  
> everyone is complicated  
> 

(17)  
❦

He feels the weight of bodies draped on him, hot limbs intertwined with his. Something’s ripped him from the unconscious ether, though he’s not sure what. Innate instinct, always quick to analyze and react; still, he greedily inhales the warm scent of sleep even while sliding his arm underneath Sakura’s shoulder blades to lift her off him while trying to dislodge Naruto’s heft from his legs. They’re numb. 

Struggling in the mess of appendages, he lets her weight back down. A fluttering sigh, and she nuzzles her face deep into his lap.

It swipes at him, a hot flash and a cold sweat in one. _Goddamn it._

Darkness. Eyes stinging in the dim while his vision adjusts in milliseconds. The outline of Sakura half in his lap and Naruto’s head bouncing, knocking against hers as he snores, sketching itself into existence. Lying on his legs and sprawled half on the floor like the deadest, infuriating weight. Each second multiplies, the details flooding and heaping upon themselves to run the reel of memories – of them laughing, slapping at one another in drunken, sloppy taps. Well, he’s not sure if _he_ participated in all of those things. No sun yet. Pins and needles abound as he shifts his legs; the urge to punch Naruto solidly in the skull intensifies. 

The sound of heavy fists knocking on the front door connotes urgency. 

“Naruto, Sakura,” he hisses. Shaking whatever piece of them he can reach, fabric and flesh. Sakura groans a little, blinking; Naruto swats away his hand, fully sunken in cozy sleep.

Sasuke sits up, his arm across Sakura’s back, and kicks Naruto off his legs. Landing hard on the floor, the latter swings at the air again, and emits a savage mutter: “I _said_ to let me nap.”

Sakura jumps as her eyes dart to the door and another round of knocks echo in the den. Giving Naruto an unceremonious kick in his side, Sasuke curses at him. 

“We’re here for Sakura-san.” The voice is sobered, weighty. “It’s an emergency.”

Her jaw tightens, lips in a thin line. 

“Identify yourselves.”

A beat. The password’s been put in place at the insistence of Tsunade and the council, not that the latter is likely concerned about their well-being for the same reasons. The man’s voice is firm, lacking the musicality the passage demands, but in no way is that part of the play.

“‘Now every mortal has pain, and sweat is constant, but if there is anything dearer than being alive, it’s dark to me.’”

She swallows, mouth dry, before satisfying the makeshift antiphon. “‘We are disastrously in love with this thing that glitters on the earth.’” A pause. 

She finishes in a low tone: “‘We call it life – we know no other.’”

Naruto’s finally up and moving, shaking the sleep from his eyes like a blustering, wet puppy. Sasuke waits for him to rouse, eyes sharp and watchful in the dim.

“We’ll get it,” he says in an undertone. Exchanges a nod with Naruto, and they stand on either side of the door, Sasuke deciding he’ll be the one to open it. 

The ANBU officer doesn’t reveal any surprise or uncertainty upon coming face to face with Uchiha Sasuke, the previously hunted missing-nin of the highest order, but a chill descends, sinking into unspoken crevasses and wounds. Without the masks, it’s possible the traces of resentment would be unabashed and brazen. Both her teammates look back to her for direction, and she nods, a soft chin-drop in lieu of something firm. 

Three ANBU enter, crossing the threshold but halting at some invisible line. Mirrored as they stand. Separating the masked from the barefaced, the establishment juxtaposed with the unruly legends. They drop to knees in one fluid movement, the painted designs on the masks distorting and swirling in the bleary light.

“Sakura-san. You’re needed to perform an emergency surgery on a high-ranking shinobi. Pardon the late hour.”

Waving the polite distinctions away, she inhales deep and lets her lungs fill, ribs flexing and stretching and chest expanding. A protracted buzzing, electricity tap dancing in her muscles and skirting her bones. 

In the moment, they breathe with her.

She wonders if it’s Kakashi; that’s the first errant, panicked thought. It falls away, tiny bursts of trepidation blooming and withering in cycles. Sasuke eyes the ANBU with cavalier, unvarnished distrust. Naruto looks to be on the verge of speaking, but manages to hold it in, fidgeting.

“Of course. Let me get my things.”

“We’re here to escort you. Considering.”

She manages to hold back the _tuh!_ that nearly tumbles off her lips. Naruto twists left and then right, then dives behind the back of the couch. No one reacts, though one ANBU officer suppresses a sound that could be anything from a titter to an accidental tic. 

“We’ll need to hurry; his status has been on the knife’s edge since he arrived.”

“Right.” She turns and puts her arm out, palm up, receiving the bag Naruto tosses into her waiting hand. She opens her mouth, but closes it as she hears the sweep and skitter of the edge of fabric against the wood and a cloak settles itself onto her shoulders. The tic, again, is audible in the room; the impression of a small smile passes her face, and she knows Sasuke sees it. 

He always does.

“Brief me.”

Another half beat. Hesitance, even. “We’re happy to do that on the way.”

“I know the medical histories of all of the high-ranking shinobi. Give me time to strategize. Tell me.”

Naruto flashes the lead ANBU a grin, proud and radiant and also delighted her temper isn’t directed at him, as is the norm. Sasuke, sweeping a cloak around his own shoulders, lowers his head to hide the corner of his lips kicking up in amusement. 

“We’re the escort, not you.” The one on the right raises his head, signals himself as the source. Again, masks are a coveted blessing. Sasuke can feel the man’s eyes boring into him, aggressive and challenging. He’ll give anything to scrap with another shinobi again, especially one with a grudge; the pleasure would be transcendental. Days of reedy, pulsing rage build up fast, though not so destabilizing and rapid as the cycles before. Like tremors, they clutch him, the anger always close.

This time, Sakura’s noise of impatience is for everyone to hear. “You are powerful, capable shinobi. Far beyond that, really.”

It always lilts like feathers, the lull before the sting. 

“But I trust these men with my life.”

Moments, too painful to be natural, float in the atmosphere and wink out of existence, the pendulum and rhythm of the universe, every passing instant the punctuating of a firm point.

“My apologies.”

Naruto bristles at the mordant tone; Sasuke growls.

“Now.” Her voice is crisp and silken in one, the weaving of thread. “Tell me what I’m working with.” 

“Ma’am. It’s Shikamaru Nara.”

Air catches in her throat, heavy and shuddering; it betrays her anticipation of a different answer. Head dips at the base of her neck, succumbing to an awful weight. She says nothing else, just closes her eyes and nods, firmly, once.

“He’s circling the drain. Running out of time.” The lead straightens and in a swift movement turns, glancing at her over his shoulder. “We’ll go on ahead.” 

They file out the door before flickering out of sight, rightly intuiting the jutsu placed on her apartment. Her recent injuries, though healed, burn and throb in some banal warning. To stay in the realm in which she performs best, when bodies are flesh and bone and machines and able to be fixed; not loved ones, not flesh and bone that degrades and succumbs to flimsy things like poison and kunai knives. 

She isn’t able to see a thing through her blurry vision, dancing like waves. When a strong hand grips her shoulder and it doesn’t tip her temper, while another lands on her opposite lower back, she wants to cry at the devotion she’s dreamed of receiving but always felt like she’s missed. Always reached for and felt it slip through her fingers while she watched their backs.

In a moment she feels them trying, futilely, to fix it all. Everything they broke.

_Don’t you cry. Don’t be so weak._

“Let’s go.”

It’s never like she expects, and the consoling and comforting part is always difficult. Even stepping into what is effectively her hospital in the middle of the night, she’s not quite sure what will greet her. 

Sobbing relatives, stricken young Chuunin, stoic ANBU, and the occasional nervous new mother – these are old friends she can manage, sweeping them under her wing like chivvying a pack of goslings to nest. She’s not proud of how easy it is, the adeptness of managing and manipulating emotions, but it’s necessary.

When she approaches the prep area before the emergency room and sees her standing like she’s lost with her long, somehow still-shiny tangle of blonde hair, painted slapdash with the colors of what signal vivid carnage, her chest tightens.

“Ino,” she murmurs. Ino turns to her, chest heaving, breathing scissored, uneven lines framing the hair around her face as if slashed, ripped from her skull. Scratches dotting her grey complexion, particularly deep ones in her forearms, splitting, gaping as red mouths turned to the sky for the chance at raindrops. A lifesize personage and soul mauled for knives’ target practice.

Pupils pressing against the bounds of normal dilation, round like pools, darkness creeping into the edges. Fists closed tight, looking as if they’ve been curled for a thousand legendary years, the timeless actions of statues.

“Ino,” she says again. Now she’s raising fingertips to a gash on her friend’s face, but not touching her, circling instead, unsure where to start. 

Ino murmurs something indistinct, eyes glazing over and tunneling, journeying to something far away. 

“Hey, I’m going in there now.” Sakura begins tying up her hair, pulling it out of her face. Jaw squaring off in determination. “I’ve got it. I’ve got him.”

“Bullshit.” Her lips form the word in a jerky, awkward fashion, and no other muscles in her face move with it. 

“Stay with them.”

“It was all a trap. An ambush.” Ino’s voice spits menace. “Are we totally expendable to you and your boss?”

“Ino, you’re—”

“Don’t, Sakura, you’re better than that! Don’t soothe me with bullshit.”

Her gorgeous face with all the scratches, crisscrossing like knitting patterns, begins to fold and crumple. Squeezes her eyes shut, holding back tears. “We knew it was suicidal. We knew it was off-book. We felt like we had to go anyway. If only I wasn’t so weak—”

Sakura’s hands come up to hold Ino’s face, light slaps as they cup her cheeks. “Don’t. Don’t go down that path; trust me, I know what it does.”

Sakura raises her eyes over Ino’s head, watches her team scrub up and place masks on their faces, the small processes and procedures she’s insisted on after all the things she’s learned how much better it can all be. How many more lives can be saved. Their eyes pass over her, signaling they are ready, then dart away at the intimate display. 

Ino’s hands slap over Sakura’s, and she presses them into her own face. Crushing them. “This is supposed to be over!” 

And now the sobs come, wracking and ugly and gulping, and they weather the shakes together, faces close. Anger tumbles out, venomous and desperate.

“Haven’t – haven’t we lost enough already?” 

Sakura stays silent. There’s no playbook for the lives they’ve lived, no easy phrases for what they’ve endured. Naruto lets out an angry huff in solidarity. Sasuke shifts in discomfort, expression dawdling over the patterns in the tile, but watches them out of the corner of his eyes, pain settling into his chest. 

A movement snags his gaze: Sakura’s fingers are on Ino’s closed fist, gently trying to pry it open. 

“So many people have died for us. _Asuma_ died for us. If he died and now we don’t get any time together, what’s – damn it, what’s the point?” Another gasp and warble, like she’s taken a knife to the gut, stealing another tiny sliver of her soul. “What a waste.”

“No, quit that,” she snaps, now putting her forehead against Ino’s. 

“I can’t take it—”

“You can take anything. You have to. We have to.”

“I—”

“Bonds don’t break from this. They’re molded, and they – they _change_ , and sometimes, they’re stretched so thin you think they’ll snap, and you’ll break from how much it hurts. Scared of the recoil when they do.” Sakura’s breathing hard, dredging up words from the heart and not the ones her head knows better, the methodical, calm ones that she should give her, not this chaotic mess of music and emotion to drag her best friend back from the precipice. She’s never seen her like this, wrongfooted and terrified. Undone.

“This war is supposed to be over! Why are we still fighting? And why are we the enemy now? When did we become targets? Why?” Begging. 

“Because we won,” Sakura responds, still trying to slip her fingernails into Ino’s tightly clasped fist. “Winners write the history of everyone’s existence. Now we’re in this spotlight that we didn’t — that we didn’t ask for.”

_But you and I, we’re the glue._

The words don’t pass her lips, but she seems to hear them, always, moving between them in a delicate osmosis of friendship. Ino’s fingers are still in fists, but when she leans, wilts, Sakura keeps her standing. And she’s not sure if her knees are giving out from exhaustion or vulnerability but suddenly they’re one being, clingy vines, touching and tangling in an instant, soft with the smell of dirt and tangy copper and disinfectant. 

_“Don’t let them win,”_ Sakura hisses. 

Sasuke watches, thinks the labyrinthine friendships of state-hired murderers and medics is confusing and eluding. That nothing ever exists as one or the other but always as something in between. Like him and Sakura, like his bond with Naruto, the women in front of him, and everyone. They’re so close to one another, it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins, meshing together in a single unit of pain. 

“You’re tougher than me.” She pulls back to look Ino in the eyes. “Act like it.”

Ino hiccups, making an attempt at a lopsided smile.

“What’s in your hands?” Refraining from asserting the force they both know she can. Convincing her with care is better.

One hand shakes as it opens, Ino’s long, pale fingers cupping tiny objects that twinkle in the fluorescent light. Naruto and Sasuke glance at one another, then back at her hand. 

Studded, bloody earrings. The divots left by her grip start to smooth, skin on her palm rising back into place. 

When the other hand opens, Naruto makes a sound between a gulp and a gasp. 

Resting in Ino’s hand is a human ear, and the earring still nestled in the cartilage twinkles like a ghastly, teasing message from the other side. Sakura’s expression stays bland, but a strong tang of nausea bubbles and coats the back of her throat. 

“I couldn’t lose them. This is what he left us with. The last thing he gave us.”

“Right.”

“And, I figured you could put it back?”

Sakura lets out an awkward, punctuated laugh at the question. Ino tips her morbid gifts into Sakura’s waiting palm. Passes the bloody, scratched backs of her hands across her eyes to swipe away tears. 

“Stay with Naruto and Sasuke-kun,” she says, gripping Ino by the elbows. Looking over her shoulder, Naruto’s already there. Ino shrugs him off a little, but doesn’t push the issue as he, surprisingly gently, leads her to the benches on the other side of the room. 

Sasuke watches Sakura close her fingers over the body part and bloody jewelry for a brief moment, until someone steps forward with a tray. She places them on it carefully. Now other medics file in, line up, hands clasped in front of them as they wait for instructions. 

He sees the tendons in her neck spring, tighten, jump. One vertebrae nudging the other into proper place, supporting her to feel as tall and authoritative as the situation demands. Commanding the respect she dictates in this space. She hardly has to instruct them, dancers or violinists settling into a routine performance etched deep into the bones. Innate. Orders send them into graceful spins, each with a role to play.

“You, notify Tsunade-sama and let her know to expect an update in the next two hours on the surgery’s status. You, check on Akimichi Chouji. If the nurse isn’t one of ours, you stay and take over. I want our best, trusted people on this.”

 _If she isn’t one of ours. Trusted people._ Sasuke frowns, thoughts flitting around the inside of his skull. Is there anyone at this point that qualifies? 

This is the operating theatre. A talent he’s not used to seeing in person, and it takes root in him, something he has no business feeling but can’t stuff back down. 

Something like pride.

“—I know his blood type and medical history, but double-check it. No mistakes.”

He feels Naruto at his back.

Sakura pulls aside her last medic and speaks to her in hushed tones. “Go to Temari. If she’s out of the village, on a mission, do not put this in writing. Disguise the request.”

The medic nods, brushing past Sasuke.

“You’re in the way, dumbass,” Naruto chides, grabbing his sleeve and dragging him toward the back wall. Sasuke recoils, but doesn’t protest. “You act like you’ve never seen her do her job before.”

Sasuke gears up to snap back, but catches sight of Ino sitting with her knees drawn up, sitting against the wall, head on her folded arms. He’s sure that his sympathy, even an attempt, would go a long way, but Naruto saves him from the stressful endeavor by taking the space next to her instead. 

A nurse walks up, extending her hand to Ino. “If you’re comfortable, I’ll help with those cuts.”

“No, I’m not, actually,” Ino’s voice is a snarl, and with her hair streaked and splattered with red, it seems to bloom in volume to protect her. An animal cornered; a retaliating poison plant. 

“Ahh, Ino,” Naruto says. 

“What? I’m a medic too, you know. I don’t need help!”

“I didn’t mean it like—”

“Can you just let me be?” Fingers curling into tight fists again, knuckles white, skin stretched thinly over bone. Naruto seems spurned, hurt, and confused. Sasuke realizes it’s not just anger in her face, but distrust. The betrayal from people in her own village that she isn’t able to suss out or discern. It’s here this feeling of — is it sympathy? — resonates, the feeling of the world torn out from underneath steady feet, twisted into something terrifying.

A small palm comes to Ino, the gentlest gesture, the soundless flutter of a bird’s wing. Naruto looks up to see Hinata, nose red from the chilled night and a sad smile on her face. “I’ll help. If you want. With your hair, too.”

Ino’s lip starts to tremble, but she swallows with noticeable effort and blinks the tears back. She takes the proffered hand, wincing as she gets to her feet. Sways a little, and Hinata anticipates it, wedging herself underneath Ino’s arm, against her waist. 

Sakura’s team lines up in front of her again. She’s shed everything unnecessary, forearms bare. Pearly and stark under the fluorescent lights, almost blue beneath the skin. Holding her hands in front of her, she’s just cleaned them, scrubbed soap into every crevasse, stripping everything she can away so the first time she touches the body, the canvas, she can be comfortable in the knowledge that no unknown factors can come to the table. Now, it’s something removed, a person she’s never seen and to which she has no attachments. To do this right.

Sasuke listens, lulled. The litany of instructions tumbling from her lips allay some strange anxiety.

“Sakura!”

Sakura turns back, sees Hinata and lets out a sigh of relief. Ino squeezes her eyes shut, intent on holding herself together. 

“What are we even fighting for?”

The only sounds are heartbeats. Looking into Hinata and Ino’s eyes in turn, her lips in the ghost of a smile. 

“How do I answer that, Ino?”

Maybe they’re all destined for this, hanging onto the long, leading thread, always fated to stand at the front line. The foreboding, suffocating sensation of being led to the edge of destiny and rocking it back on its heels, fighting back the patterns the universe yearns to place on their shoulders, resisting the designs with which its enamored. 

“But . . . we can’t stop now.”

❦

Blocky, fuzzy shapes emerge as he blinks; the antiseptic air immediately stings his eyes, the tip of his nose. Grunts and groans. Floating, shuddering sensations like the roiling of a deck upon the sea. 

A sting. The left side of his head. He shifts to lift the arm on the same side, testing its prowess as a tentative newborn animal does. It wobbles, and he turns his arm gingerly at the elbow, palm facing up, feeling reality soak in and limbs become his own again, joints and sinew stitching back together and re-associating courtesy of consciousness. 

“Ugh.”

Still, the sting. Skin feeling pulled, puckered and tight around the ear. Though his limb isn’t fully cooperating yet, slogging from sleep and what he’s guessing is the aftereffects of anesthesia, his peripheral vision notices lithe limbs draped across one of those hideously uncomfortable hospital chairs. 

One of her legs dangles over the armrest of it, bent at the knee. Arm covering her eyes as if blocking bright light, protecting and hoarding even the slightest bit of darkness to burrow into for sleep. 

Blood in her nail beds, thin crescent rings.

_How long? How long have I been out?_

Raising his hand the rest of the way, feeling uncharacteristically weak with a dash of foreboding, his fingers touch his ear—

He cries out and tries to muffle it, the pain unsettling. It’s there, attached, but as the rough pad of his index finger traces the camber where the skin meets the skull it incites a spreading, turbid sensation of nausea. 

“Don’t.” Sakura’s voice is raspy, laden with sleepy admonishment and just the tiniest impatient snap. “It’ll just hurt. Let it heal.”

Yawning into her arm, gives herself a moment to stretch before pulling herself upright in the chair. Buried under a cloak, functioning as a makeshift blanket and far too big for her, she leaves it on the seat as she rises to check on him. Shikamaru notices the rumpled folds in her clothes, the wan, colorless tone of her skin. He jumps when her hand meets his forehead. He feels calloused fingertips, insides of knuckles. 

“No fever. Very good.” 

“Guessing I have you to thank, huh?”

“It’s what I do.” She says this casually, but her the wobble in her voice betrays her.

“What—?”

“Gory details. You probably don’t want to hear them. Ino brought you back here, though. Kept you alive until you crossed back into our territory.”

Shikamaru is silent for a moment, one that stretches with the questions he’s discomfited to ask. Selfishly, he hopes the smart woman next to him can simply offer up some answers. 

“Your ear’s delicate, though, so don’t touch that for a while.”

Something in Sakura’s voice narrows, becoming higher in pitch. “Sorry, I’m your doctor, not your girlfriend. Don’t know why I’m so—”

“Don’t your thickheaded teammates ever tell you to knock off that ‘sorry’ stuff? So you care. Big deal.” Always expressing real emotions as a throwaway drawl, his hand rises again to touch what feels like a braided seam behind his cartilage. 

Sakura takes it gently, pressing it back down to the hospital sheets. Places her own fingers on the side of his face, inspecting whatever he can’t see.

“Sometimes.” He senses a grin surfacing on her face. “They’re getting better.”

She leans closer, pressing her lips to Shikamaru’s forehead. It’s quick but caring, the familiar and jarring manner of women, the type he likes despite his hemming and hawing, with quick tempers and soft hearts. The blush that rises into his cheekbones embarrasses him.

A moment. Another. Stretching and careening into seconds strung together into something delicate, strings of pearls and silken threads of lace. 

“I was so close.”

Her expression sinks a bit, settles into the tension they’ve all been carrying, what hangs on them like weights in the marrow.

“You did everything you could. More than that, even.”

“That mission was to teach us a lesson. Whatever I was close to figuring out—”

“You’ve done your duty. You’ve done enough” she says, voice quiet. Places a hand on his shoulder. He’s still acutely aware of the fire in his face, anger at his failure. For god knows how many hours she worked on him, bringing him back from the brink. For all the blood soaked into her skin. 

“Where’s Chouji?” The thought strikes him hard, adds lines and years to his expression. As if he’s stricken he didn’t ask it at the start.

“He’s in good shape, and safe. Really.” Reassurance, and he believes her. “Lost quite a bit of blood and reached a tipping point of chakra exhaustion, but, not as badly as you.”

Her hands take refuge behind her back; he can imagine her fingers twisting around one another in anxiety, the unspoken question lingering. “She’s all right, too. A lot of cuts and wounds, but in one piece.” Shikamaru sighs. Covering her mouth, she groans. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say it like—”

Lost in his thoughts, he interrupts. “Oi, don’t count me out of this. This is my village, too. I was close. And, ” —here he rubs tired fingers through his hair, not describing it further—“careful, ah, I don’t want to scrap with your . . . whatever you’re calling each other nowadays.”

The roll of her eyes arrives right on cue. “We know exactly what we are, you and I.” No pretense, ringing clear. She laughs, and adds, “I wouldn’t let him try.”

“We do.” A long, low exhale, with a whistle at the end. “But you’re channeling Temari right now.”

Sakura gives him a retaliatory pinch on the arm; Shikamaru winces, waving her away. A sharp pain sets his head ringing. Instead he asks, “Are _you_ all right?”

It’s her turn to parry questions. “Ino deserves to know you’re up. Can I—?”

He lets out a long breath, and nods.

She’s already coming through the door; Ino brushes by, ghostlike, dead and cold. The drag of her friend’s nails and the quick, desperate grasp masquerading as relief are so faint it may have been Sakura’s imagination. 

Despite the dark circles ringing the skin under his eyes, Naruto puts closed fists on his hips and grins. “Oh man, you’re all stitched up now, all your parts attached. You look way better!”

“What does that mean?”

“Well you lost an ear, a—”

“Part _s_?” Shikamaru emphasizes the ‘s’ at the end. “Parts _plural?_ ”

As Ino stops abruptly at his bedside, fingers curled into shaking fists, Sakura senses the impending, colliding astriction and intervenes. “Too many visitors. One at a time, doctor’s orders. C’mon Naruto, out!”

Sakura drags him out the door by the collar against his protests; Sasuke’s loitering at a respectful distance across the hall, and as she shakes Naruto with all the tenderness of a rabid animal, he attempts de-escalation. 

“You might kill him. It will give you more work to do.” There’s no humor in his low voice, but Naruto leaps on the support anyway.

“—There were only two people in the room, Sakura-chan, you’re overreacting—”

At the last word, something twitches in her expression; Sasuke puts a hand on her forearm and tries again.

“He’s a fucking idiot—”

“I’m not an idiot, Ino shouldn’t be alone, you’re just a cold bastard—”

“Naruto,” Sakura begins, sweetly. Baring her teeth in delicate rage. “ _I_ give instructions around here. Use your righteous energy to guard the door.” Now she signals Sasuke with her eyes; anger and heat. Unnerving and striking. “I have to check on Chouji. No one, even someone we know, gets through this door. Not ANBU, not other nurses - nobody.” 

“But—”

Sakura levels her gaze with the intensity of a firing line and Naruto stares down the barrel of it in obstinance. The moment lasts a little too long. All three hang on to one another in a fierce deadlock, in the way of people always striving to triumph but willing to cave to those they cherish. The core, of course, is fear. What binds them together in this second is the terror of what’s calling, the things mundane and complicated, unspoken and violent, all in ivied filaments. 

As one, they all let go of one another, fingers trailing off fabric and skin in the way of quiet murmurs. For a moment, they’re ashamed at the outburst on display, perhaps feeling last night’s events laid bare in stark daylight.

The only one in the hallway waiting with them is Hinata. Still, silent.

Sakura rubs her eyes with the heel of her hand. Eyelids redden and swell beneath her disinfected, calloused skin. “We shouldn’t fight. We’ll be up for a while.”

Naruto’s stubbornness has dissipated, but the wounded expression betrays him. Sasuke swallows hard, hearing the high pitch of Ino’s sobs catching in her throat in a ceaseless rhythm, smothering their own half-life. If bonded strings were real, the myriad map of complications brought to light and life against the grey, no one could ever call it normal. It would confound even the most intelligent observer.

Sakura leaves them, draws close to Hinata. Body acting as a privacy screen, obscuring the view, but for what reason, she’s not even sure. 

“He’s stable now, everything attached again. We don’t want any visitors; we can’t be sure who’s on our side.”

“And Ino?”

“She’s . . . physically all right.”

It’s obvious what she doesn’t say, and Hinata doesn’t press. Instead her pale eyes stare over Sakura’s shoulder at Naruto, whose chin bends forward slightly, deflated, his back to her and eyes on someone else. Standing in the doorway and staring with reckless abandon, and it’s the equivalent of his intestines and heart carved open, a cadaver, ribs peeled back for all to behold. 

Expressions and glances bounce among them, saying everything and nothing in an engulfing silence. From where Sasuke’s standing, he feels every string being tugged. Shikamaru’s flat gaze says nothing, but his fingers on the gummy, bloodred ends of Ino’s hair says something else. No one would be able to disabuse Naruto of the notion that it’s fear and friendship, that it isn’t what he thinks. That all relationships have fuzzy edges and shades of grey, and the paradigm they exist in makes it too messy to suss. 

Sasuke isn’t so familiar with Hinata that he would know what she’s feeling, but her expression holds something unable to be articulated.

And her blank eyes are a shroud, watching him as he watches her as she cries for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Appoggiatura  
> Musical Ornament  
>  _The term comes from the Italian verb appoggiare, "to lean upon". The appoggiatura is often used to express emotional "yearning"._
> 
> **the passage that functioned as the code was from _Grief Lessons: Four Plays by Euripides by Anne Carson._


End file.
